Please Critique My Site!!

[Jane Davis]

www.liceice.com. I have had my site up for almost 3 years, although the redesign and new hosting/SEO company has had the site for 10 months.

Please visit www.liceice.com and give me your opinion! I am anxious for any and all feedback. We are getting ,1% conversion to the shopping cart, over 90% dropping off after the home page. We have had almost 20,000 visits to the site since last June, but almost no conversion to sales!

Thank you so much in advance for your feedback!

Jane Davis
Lice Ice™

[roban]

Hi Jane. I don't know anything about your product or how it fares in SERPS or navigation. I don't know why people are abandoning your site without doing some investigation. There are a couple of things I would do however:

1. Move your 'Add to Cart' button to the top of the page
2. Get rid of the overnight shipping line on the main page. It's a huge number and may be off-putting.
3. Your 'About Us' page tells me about the manufacturer but I want to know who I am sending my $$$ to.
4. Why have 2 Authorize.Net emblems on the home page?
5. Why bother to have a 'Products' page? You only have 1 product.

I like the Store Locater, Contact and FAQ pages.

[MzTaz]

Hi Jane :^)

I took a quick look at your site and have a few comments/suggestions:
1) When viewing the home page using either Internet Explorer or Firefox I am unable to see the menu images on the left. I can see them fine from all other pages, this might explain some of the home page drop-off?
2) You should keep the separate 'Products' link as some people look specifically for that link when arriving at a home page or from other pages in a site.
3) You should make it as easy to order as possible (the fewer times your customer has to click to order your products the better):
- to achieve this you could add a drop-down box and "Add to Cart" button at the bottom of your menu where the options in the drop-down default to your main product but allows them to select the 3 pack or 5 pack. This way they can easily add the product to their cart from any page.
I would not recommend this method however if you plan on significantly increasing your product line.
- at minimum I would say add the product selection and add to cart button to the top of the products.htm page.
4) I would recommend you add a "Next" "Previous" and "Main" button to the six areas on your product page or have some easier method of navigation from each of those pages to each of the others.
5) You might want to consider, if you haven't already, trying a Free shipping promotion and see if that helps with your conversion rate.

I think the site is very clean and professional looking overall. I hope you find some of this information useful!

Good Luck with your business!

[vbeal]

Good morning Jane,
Looks like a product that certainly has potential and definitely fulfils a need out there!

On your main index page there is something amuck with your left-hand navigation images. I get a line of broken images, however on subsequent pages this does work correctly. What I do think your site does well on various pages is 1) inform parents (or any adult) about head lice. 2) Provide good information on why your product works and its benefits.

Using Google I tried several searches and did not see your site URL in the first page of results. Even when searching for natural head lice treatments your site was no where to be seen in the first page of search results. I think you need to work on boosting your rankings for Google searches for "organic" and "natural" head lice treatment. Even if I type the exact product name in, I get very few worthy results (obviously your site is there - but no user or magazine reviews, no mentions in head lice product round ups). Consumers are search savvy now. Even if they do find your site online, they won't be able to many good third-party resources and comments about your product to further build buyer confidence.

After reading the About US page, I was left wondering if you are the owner of the brand or are reselling the product. I would definitely expand this section - nothing here really gives me confidence about who you are, what your role in the product is, and why I should purchase from this Web site.

My last comment would be on the conversions. My best guess at why people abandon without a purchase is that most people aren't buying this online because they have to wait for it (shipping). As a parent if I discover my child has come home from school with head lice there is no way I am going to wait 24 hours to start a treatment (which I would have to do if I buy it online). I might go online to research first, but I am going to be in the car on the way to a drugstore that same day to immediately purchase a treatment package and start it right away. I wouldn't buy this type of product online because you have to wait for it, and my local drugstore will offer some type of natural alternative to this product.

Some research should tell you if that point is valid and true for a majority of consumers who purchase head lice treatments. If that is the case you might be better off using your site for information, for preventative treatment sales (where people will buy it when there is no immediate emergency need), and for general marketing to get the product into more stores.

Good luck - it looks like a great product!
Vangie

[JPnyc]

Same here, nothing but broken images on the left. I had no idea what they were but assumed they were navigation buttons.

[Jane Davis]

Good Morning!

Thanks so much for your feedback! My business partner who is an aol subscriber has always had troubles with the home page navigation buttons not being visible. I have a T1 DSL connection and I have never had trouble.
We were told it was an aol issue.

Yesterday, the hosting company said they added a library page, and forgot to reload the images. So now I am unsure whether or not the problem has been going on for some time and is unrelated to yesterday. It would make sense that the drop-off rate is so high if people have not been able to see the navigation on the home page! Any suggestions?

As far as your other observations go... Thank You a million times for all your valuable input! Keep your comments coming!! We are so excited to find a forum with such excellent feedback, and truley appreciate your help! Have a great day!

Jane Davis

[JPnyc]

I see them now but they weren't loading before. Not an AOL issue since I've never used it.

[vbeal]

I think the buttons was a new issue. I have never used AOL either, but since reading your reply I went back and it loads just fine.

Vangie

[dkbook]

No problems with images, nice looking site.

Have to agree with the others - if you've got the little critters, you can not wait several days for something to get rid of them.

What is the shelf life on the product? Perhaps if it is long enough you could promote it more as a "must have" in your medicine cabinet.

[vbeal]

dkbook - I would agree completely.

Jane - Do you notice many site exits at the "store locator" section of your Web site?

Have you thought about something like a "Be Prepared" kit that includes the product (of course), some pamphlets, maybe a discrete storage nylon bag (people still have a stigma about head lice even with all the information available today) that emphasizes that this product is worth having in your home for when the letters come home saying head lice has been found in your child school (or preschool). It might be worth considering and possibly it could help boost the Internet sales...?

I'm sure there are many parents who do prepare "just incase" and are looking for a more natural product than the current (and more common) pesticide s that are available.

[FineWoodenToys]

I was a bit put off by the "Products" page, as well. It seemed to suggest that $4.99 was the price of the item, but when I got to the actual product and it said 19.95, I thought "what happened to 4.99?". I had to search the small print for the answer. I think this makes you come off as just another business trying to pull a fast one - makes you seem less trustworthy.

In addition - as a web-retailer myself, I notice that many shoppers do not read the whole product description, especially the small print. I'd want to make sure that everyone knew this is good for "3-4 normal applications" because that off-sets the price. Personally, I'd put it right up near the price somewhere, bold or colored or something so that it can't be missed.

Noticed a couple of spelling errors "shiping" on the product description page, "Indentify" on the FAQ page.

Otherwise, I really like the look and feel. No problems with the graphics or navigation. LOVE all the testimonials, esp from school nurses (people who really know the score). That's what would really sell me on it.

Best of luck!

[Jane Davis]

Good Afternoon!

Thanks for such excellent feedback! All of your suggestions have been so helpful. Our conversion rate for the store locator is 11.9%, then 9.8% to the actual state pages. The conversion rate for home page to interior pages, then to the shopping cart is 1.8%.

We were told by the SEO company that it takes about 1 year to get into Google's first page. We are somewhere on page 4 or 5 for most key word phrases. Does that sound about right? It seems like we have been at this web thing forever, of course!

We loved the suggestion about promoting our product as a "must have" for the medicine cabinet, and for the prevention side. I think most parents have no choice but to go to the store as soon as an infestation occurs. Because you can use our product in place of a daily styling gel, we are going to really focus on that.

Thank you all so much for your input. I can't wait to see your suggestions on our site! Have the most awesome evening!

Jane Davis

[FineWoodenToys]

Hi Jane,

Whether you show on the first page of Google depends on a lot of things, of course - such as how common are the keywords you're wanting to rank for and what your competition is like. Within just a few months I was showing on the first page for less common keyword phrases. I suppose at about a year I started to see a lot more traffic from Google natural search results and started to reach the top for some of my primary keyword phrases. It's an ongoing process, though - it took me 2.5 years to reach the first page for one of my primary phrases, but I suspect my site was not as well optimized for that particular one.

[Jenita]

Hi,

your site looks good. I like the header image.